I am fascinated by the endless possibilities for having fun when cooking despite (or perhaps because of)

• limited or unusual cooking facilities,
• limited access to ingredients,
• limited time, and
• limited opportunity to consult cookery books.

This blog celebrates the fact that these limitations add up to – freedom!

And it also makes the website ideal for students, anyone with restricted cooking facilities, and novice cooks.

The focus is on recipes and an approach to cooking that produce success when you may have little more than a burner or two, and you want only a few ingredients for each meal – and for those to be required in amounts where, if you start using it, you generally want to finish it.  And I relish gathering and sharing tips to overcome a lack of cooking equipment.

My recipes assume you mostly won’t want to spend a large part of your holiday on long and complex dishes.  But these recipes almost all produce recognizably “proper” meals – “proper” in appearance and in nutritional value (with a few wicked whims thrown in as well, it must be admitted).

We can all recognize the idyll:  smoke drifting from a barbie as the long rays of the warm evening sun slant across a golden beach;  or perhaps freshly griddled fish for lunch under the awning of a little Mediterranean hideaway; or – well, add your own particular dream.

The reality can too often be burnt fingers and burnt sausages, baked beans that have caught on the bottom of a pan which will now be murder to wash, and chips from the takeaway (ah!  those went down well!).  The experience needed to avoid this sort of problem takes time and effort to acquire, and is generally learned the hard way.  Gain that knowledge here, pain free!

One recipe suits all?

A camper cooking huddled at the edge of his/her bivvy in pouring rain and an unpleasant wind is not in the same situation as the cook in a motorhome on a well-appointed campsite in a sunny part of France, and is still less like the cook in a holiday cottage, but they do share some essential things.  They generally don’t want it to be slow or complicated, and they don’t want a long list of ingredients.

They are likely to be different in their attitude to cooking times, however.  The camper in the bivvy can’t cook fast enough, so that he/she can retreat with hot food to the relative warmth of the tent – they should think of [example] or [example].  Others using this blog may sometimes be unconcerned about the time a meal takes to cook, as long as they don’t have to stand over a hot stove while it does it – they want the preparation to be quick but are then happy to sit in the shade with the cool drink of their choice while it cooks (think [example] or [example]) or, a rather different but equally pleasurable world, to snuggle up with a hot drink in their ‘van or boat, or in front of the fire in their holiday cottage, enjoying the warmth and richness that the longer cooking produces (think [example] or [example]).

When you’re stuck at home, or want to recreate past travels – 

– try the On Location tab – I gather there recipes I enjoy making from particular areas, be it Cornwall or Scotland or Normandy.  That way I can remind myself of past travels, anticipate new ones, or enjoy the delights of armchair travel.

And for crazy moments –

A few foods have qualified to be included in this blog where the pleasure and entertainment of the cooking of them is at least part of the purpose.  Just as sailors would be ordered to “Dance and skylark!” when cooped up in bad weather, so if you are stuck in a confined space with children in bad weather, there is a lot of (inexpensive) entertainment value to be had in making [pancakes], or fudge [tablet], or even [bread] (which doesn’t need an oven).  Backpackers will mostly have to skip these sadly, but they have probably already got rid of their excess energy!

I’d love to hear about your favourite travel recipes (I’ll acknowledge them as yours if I blog them) so do contact me at ………………

And sign up for my twice weekly blog for inspiration.

It comes out on Fridays, to encourage you to forget the chores you think you ought to be spending the weekend doing and to get out instead; and on Tuesdays to get you into the mood to plan next weekend’s jaunt.

Of course almost all the recipes are a breeze in a normal kitchen.  An endless vista of easy, quick and tasty weekday suppers opens before us!

Happy, quick, and easy cooking, and – bon appétit!

Anna